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Vote on Desiree Davidson's Story
Were they afraid we were planning a coup d'etat?
I spent my first summer during Columbia Law School at a firm in Philadelphia described as one of the best places in the city for black lawyers. I believed that if there was any place where I would have an equal chance at opportunities, be treated fairly and succeed, this would be it. There were three black female summer associates out of sixty that year but any time all three of us were in an office talking, one of the partners would knock on the door to see how we were doing. It happened too often to be a coincidence that sometimes we would purposely agree to meet in so-and-so's office to test our theory that we were being monitored. Like clock work, ten minutes after we would get together a partner would stop by.
A Lose-Lose Situation
- Workplace Unfairness
- Female
- African-American
- Law Firm
- Considering Leaving
- Non-Profit
- Assignments
- Stereotyping
- Stifled Growth
- Underutilized
- Undervalued
Black associates in the litigation department had it worse than me. They were always staffed on document review, which is essentially the grunt work of litigation. As a litigator, you want to take depositions or write a brief. If you're doing document review for six months you have no skills to build upon. When a black associate asked to be rotated off to a different assignment, a partner said, "We kind of need you to be here for continuity purposes, but if you want to do something else it's on you." Who would ask for a meaningful project when you're unlikely to do your best because your time is consumed with document review? I remember one document review project where three of the four attorneys were black. The one white attorney was rotated off.